Controversy FAQ Interview Question 15

Many of your detractors quote brainwash expert Margaret Singer and then go on to say that you use the same methods of control and manipulation that a cult does. ACCD's own literature admits that the trainings can be intense or emotionally rigorous events. What do you say to the charge than an ACCD training's artificial physical and emotional stress make people highly suggestible to brain manipulation, and that ACCD trainers use intellectual confusion designed to wear down the will of participants and make them controllable?

First of all, professionally speaking, Singer was thoroughly discredited by her professional peers. If people want to use her work, that's their prerogative, but they should first look at the fruit of what she produced. The Lord tells us that we know a tree by its fruit. Check out Margaret Singer and the people that have been kidnapped by her and brutalized by her, and look at her colleagues in her own field. She thought Schein and Lifton were going to be allies, and they told her she was wrong. One of the scientists who peer reviewed her research said it was appalling how sloppy her research was. We think that if you look at the fruit of her life and the fruit of our ministry, the results speak for themselves.

Margaret Singer was partners with a man named Ted Patrick, who was the founder of a group called Citizens for Freedom Foundation. They were basically formed to investigate the born-again movement, because they believed that what pastors were doing was brainwashing people into an emotional state and then having them convert to Christianity. That was one of their first projects.

Most people that are in the Church who are using these terms and these distinctions (that are false distinctions created by Margaret Singer) have no idea what their background is and what they were originally used for. Singer came after the Pentecostal, born-again, evangelical movement when it was first happening, and she said that if Jesus was alive today, she would deprogram Him. So when a Christian organization starts using her work to base questions and attacks on other Christian organizations, basically they have jumped ship and moved over to the adversary's side, the side that's looking to destroy the reputability of the kingdom and what God's doing in the earth.

As to our work being rigorous, it absolutely is rigorous because we are focused on character formation and radical change. We certainly believe Jesus' ministry was rigorous! To stay within the realm of lackadaisical effort doesn't produce radical fruit. So we do the best we can to prepare people who come to participate in our trainings. It's like a gymnasium: if you go into a gymnasium and work out, if your workout is rigorous, it produces more benefit. It's the same principle. The rigor is designed simply to create maximum value. It's not a problem if someone is not interested in that type of challenge or rigor. God can work in all sorts of ways in his/her life. But we have found that the rigor of our trainings is a tool that people can use to catalyze tremendous transformation in their lives if they are willing to fully participate.

As to the claim that we try to wear people down physically, that is just not true. Most of our trainings--not all of them, but most of them--are very full days. The reason for that is simply that we're trying to pack as much value into the event as possible. At one point, we experimented with having the days spread out further with the content spread out over more days, but we found it made it more difficult for people to be able to participate, so we simply pack as much value as possible into each day.

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